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Day 1 finished up late at the Capital Grille Restaurant, a place that feels like it’s ripped straight from a comic book and exactly where you’d expect to meet the Marvel Heroes team, Gazillion Entertainment. As the drinks flowed so did the information including some pretty startling future updates in great detail, much to the amused horror of CEO David Brevik who sat by repeating every few minutes, “Are you really going to tell them that?” As you can imagine it was one of those moments gaming press all live for. “The Big Reveal” had arrived.

First we heard some pretty sweet info over the initial beta testing of the next character to be introduced into the game, Emma Frost. Her trailer gives you a nice visual of the three trees she can specialize in including a diamond skin tree to make you a tank, a psionic blast focused tree for powerful nuking skills, and a taming branch allowing players to turn just about anything into a pet. And that’s no hyperbole. Players in beta are taming everything from the giant t-rexes to the summoned X-Men clones. Because who doesn’t want a pet Cyclops or Wolverine by their side?

I thought this was fine and all but asked how much they were going to allow to remain in at launch. To which they replied “All of it.” The only exception so far seems to be the genius player that charmed an overpowered defense turret into following her around 1 shoting everything. Enjoy that while beta lasts. They also spoke of Fear Itself, an ultimate that unleashes a wave of horrific phantom monstrosities on all foes on the screen. Sounds pretty brutal and the phantoms are apparently tough enough that you’d likely need to use Cyclops ulti or something on par with it to have a chance of destroying the creatures to end the thirty second onslaught prematurely in PvP.

Plenty of future hints were dropped of upcoming heroes. I can’t confirm how true they are but Gambit was repeatedly teased. Squirrel Girl and Rocket Raccoon are soon to be introduced as well. Brevik mentioned some interesting conversations with the lawyers and lore hounds at Marvel of how they actually went to him first and wanted to see Rocket added to the game. On that note the lore hounds are apparently quite adamant about keeping this game adherent to lore and as such, Emma Frost will break boxes open with her fists rather than psionic blasts because she has telepathy, not telekinesis. Hardcore…

The topic of gender swap skins was also brought up and the lore hounds have approved a female Deadpool so players can look forward to that. A female Spiderman, Thor, She-Hulk, and Daredevil were also mentioned a few times but never confirmed.

New dynamic events are also being polished up including a British Invasion in which a giant swarm of beetles crash the party. Apparently this can even happen during the Doctor Doom battle so beware, the beetles are coming!

Talk of awarding players who tend to play a wide array of heroes was also introduced. Though unnamed, they were looking into implementing a system in which players could gain power-ups from the ‘bench warmers,’ aka leveled up heroes that you’re not currently using in battle. The power ups would be present at level 15 and a second more noticeable buff would arrive at level 40. They are considering making it a party wide bonus as well so others in your group could benefit from your experienced roster. I offered the idea that Squirrel Girl would award fluffy tails as a boost and they seemed to like the idea quite a bit. Incoming squirrel tails on everyone. You’ve been warned.

On the topic of Squirrel Girl, they compared her skill set to that of a Diablo necromancer, focusing on summoning and controlling minions to fight. Except instead of undead and other demons, it will be horrible cute squirrels. I’m calling a rabies DoT ability right now.

The main driving point of the meeting though was the introduction of version 1.2 which is said to revolutionize the entire game. “Like playing a brand new title,” was the catch phrase of the night. So many improvements are coming with it that it’s challenging to list them all (especially after my buzz kicked in from the Sleeping Poet Riesling wine) but we’ll certainly be giving the game an updated review as I’ve never seen developers so confident that their next update would be so well received. We shall see Gazillion, soon enough.

That’s the end of my day 1 coverage. But of course I’ve got plenty more Cosplay in part 2 of our cosplay round-up so check it out!

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PAX Prime is always full of surprises. Surprise games rise from nowhere. Surprise esports tournaments spring up left and right. And there’s always that rare drunken panel of game developers that spill the beans on a secret that wasn’t supposed to be known for another eighth months.